The Will Project

That’s the code name we used this summer.  For the first time, the Archives was a part of a Davidson Research Initiative (DRI) project.  The Summer
Research Fellows tackle a wide range of topics spending hours in science labs, working out mathematical models, even traveling abroad.  The Will Project team, students Eleanor Yarboro and Desmond Niegowski and their faculty advisor,  Professor Shireen Campbell, spent their summer hours in the archives and doing oral histories to document the life and times of William Holt Terry, Davidson alumnus, chaplain and Dean of Students.

Eleanor and Desmond went through dozens of archival boxes and files to get a sense of Davidson’s history and what the campus would have been like when Will Terry was a student in the early 1950s, when he came back as a chaplain, and all the changes during his tenure as Dean of Students, 1971-1994.  They also used their research to prepare questions for interviews with former colleagues.  The result of all their work now appears on the Archives and Special Collections website as part of the Davidson Encyclopedia.

There is a introductory page, a series of essays documenting Will Terry’s life and roles at Davidson, two essays on student life at Davidson, and an interactive timeline for the history of Y Secretaries and Chaplains at Davidson.  The pages aren’t quite finished. We’ll be adding more documentation, including transcripts of some of the interviews.

Below are links to all the research and a few teaser lines to encourage exploration.  We also encourage anyone with Will stories to share them with us – through comments or emails.

William Holt Terry By the Decades:
1950-1959  -At first, however, he had no interest in attending the school. In fact, his mother had to convince him to go and all but packed his bags for him. [3] This young man loved classical music, who loved the beach, the church, dirty jokes, school, and his friends, but had yet to learn to love Davidson.

1960-1969 -Will Terry’s role as a chaplain differed from his time as the Secretary of the Y in several important ways. Firstly, the position of chaplaincy was actually an offshoot of the secretaryship. [3] This position of the secretary had evolved over decades at Davidson, usually filled by recent Davidson graduates; Will himself was secretary when he was only 24 years old. The chaplaincy, however, tended to be held by older men who had already completed their time at seminary and could offer pastoral care.

1970-1979 -The rumblings of conflict in the Davidson College Presbyterian Church over race relations reflects broader tensions about race in the Presbyterian Church United States during the middle decades of the twentieth century

1980-1989 – Rev. Will Terry entered the ‘80s having been affiliated with the college for thirty years. In addition to being the Dean of Students, he also led cooking classes in his home and, following his own four years as chaplain, played a role in vetting and supporting the succession of college chaplains.

1990-1999 -As Davidson College entered the ‘90s, the accumulation of changes over the previous four decades were bearing down on it full-force. Will Terry had adjusted to these changes on a personal and institutional level, but new opportunities and corresponding challenges just kept coming.

2000-2015 -Having settled firmly into retirement, Rev. Will Terry continued to devote his time and energy to the things he loved best. According to general consensus, the majority of that energy went into the Terry Scholarship and Fellowship Program.

Student Life:  1950s -In the winter of 1952, a lion cub ran through Davidson’s manicured campus. Sigma Alpha Epsilon ordered their pledges to capture the lion cub. Of the 277 freshmen men, nearly eighty percent pledged, and, of those, 80 percent were the fourteen SAE pledges searching the grounds for a lion cu

 1970s -During the 1970s, Davidson’s biggest student life change was coeducation. The first freshmen class of women entered in the fall of 1972. With the influx of women, there were drastic changes to the campus itself. Prior to coeducation, Davidson had barely any women’s facilities.

Davidson College Chaplaincy Timeline